10 Facts About Barny Boatman You Probably Didn’t Know

How Barny Boatman became a poker pro long before the Poker Boom. What was the initial purpose behind creating the HendonMob website. And how he manages to stay at the top and achieve outstanding results. Discover 10 facts about Barny Boatman biography.

Fact #1. Barny Boatman was born in 1956 in London. His parents came from different backgrounds. His father was a union activist, while his mother hailed from one of the wealthiest Russian-Jewish families. They often spoke to him and his siblings about respecting others and being intolerant of racism. Boatman’s parents held left-wing views. Several families lived together in one large house, and the children shared everything among themselves.

Fact #2. At the age of 15, Boatman traveled across Europe hitchhiking for six weeks without his parents’ permission. During most of this time, he hung out with American soldiers who had returned from the Vietnam War with bags of grass.

Fact #3. Barny Boatman has tried his hand at a dozen different jobs. He taught English, worked as a freelance journalist, writing film reviews and reports. His favorite job was working in a legal office in Bermondsey, representing people in arbitration. Boatman also designed board games. Once, he was cheated out of money by a publisher. He created one board game that sold well, but he didn’t receive any payment for it. It was a small lesson about the difference between having ideas and being able to be a businessman. He also worked as a bartender and a builder. But he worked longest as a programmer. Thanks to this job, he traveled to Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and Australia.

Fact #4. Barny Boatman began playing poker in the mid-1990s. He and his brother Ross, along with friends, played penny home games. Then he found The Vic club and was the first to join it. He won his first tournament, a Seven-Card Stud event with 100 participants. The first prize was £2000 — more money than he had ever seen in his life. The following week, he returned and split the heads-up.

Fact #5. In April 1998, Barny Boatman went to Slovenia. He played another Seven-Card Stud tournament for $300 and won it. The prize for the victory was $11,735. That was the most money he had ever held in his life. He got tired of his usual job. After that win, he decided to travel the world and play poker until the money ran out. But it never happened. That’s how he began his professional poker career.

Fact #6. In the late 1990s, Barny Boatman, Ross Boatman, Joe Beevers, and Ram Vaswani traveled across the UK playing poker. They were called the Hendon Mob: Hendon is a suburb of London, where Joe Beevers was from. The website came first, and then the player database was uploaded. Initially, the site was created as a fan page for Hendonmob’s followers. That’s how Hendonmob sought sponsors before it became mainstream.

Fact #7. But it wasn’t so easy to find sponsors. Guys wrote to about 40 different companies, including non-poker ones like Virgin, British Airways, and Red Bull, and received only 8 responses: “Thank you, but no.” The rest simply ignored us. The best response came from Red Bull, who sent them two crates of their energy drink, after which guys didn’t sleep for three weeks.

Fact #8. Barny Boatman has amassed $5,478,616 in prize money in live tournaments. He won two WSOP bracelets: 2013 WSOP $1,500 NLHE ($546K) and 2015 WSOPE €550 PLO (€54.7K). Barny Boatman secured his best cash by winning the €5K Main Event EPT Paris (€1,287,800) in February 2024.

Fact #9. Boatman believes that his main trophy is longevity. He always tries to play ‘against the opponent.’ Communication and the ability to understand people matters at the table the most for him.

Fact #10. Boatman is an active Twitter user: barnyboatman.